In this blog post, I am talking to a good friend of mine, Leon Angus, who I met because of our affiliate marketing background.

Click this link to see all my affiliate marketing archives.

Leon Angus is the creator of the SEO YouTube Channel Leon Angus Affiliate Marketing SEO.

He started out in affiliate marketing, but quickly turned to building affiliate niche websites by leveraging search engine optimisation (SEO).

I decided to interview him to share with you some knowledge on how to get your own affiliate niche website started. Click this link to learn how to start your website/blog with Bluehost.

Leon is one of those marketers who, just like you, is building his affiliate niche website as he learns how to put the steps in place. Just like any beginner, the process may be overwhelming so I hope that with Leon’s help, he is able to break down for you how to get started with building an affiliate niche website from scratch.

What you will learn:

• How to find affiliate marketing niches
• Is there a best niche for affiliate marketing
• How to get inspiration to write your affiliate articles
• How to promote your affiliate article once you hit publish
• Tools to use in the creation of your affiliate niche website
• Recommended affiliate networks for finding products for your affiliate niche website
• Recommended plugins to use for your affiliate niche website
• Tips for anyone who wants to build an affiliate niche website

How to find your affiliate marketing niche?

The first thing I do when finding a niche is looking at a set of things I genuinely have interest in. I have made the mistake in the past of picking things based on potential gain, which has led me down boring long roads of business.

Click here to learn 6 of the most profitable niche markets for affiliate marketers. 

There are 4 main things that I look at when picking a niche:  

1. What are my skill sets and what skills can I learn in a certain niche?
2. Is this something I have an interest in?
3. Is this seasonal or consistent through the year (google trends)
4. Are there problems big enough in this niche that need fixing?

Once I have these 4 things in check, then I’ll usually go for the niche. I believe it does not matter what niche you choose, as everything in any niche is monetisable.

You just may have to take a different approach for certain topics etc. Like for example, you may find that certain topics cannot be monetised with affiliate products.

But then you have other ways, like info products and memberships or ads that make up for that. It’s all about just picking the niche and then finding direction later.

The analogy I always use, is that you can’t steer a car until it gets moving. So put your foot on the gas and then manoeuvre afterwards.

Is there a best niche for affiliate marketing?

There is no such thing as the best niche as every type of niche holds different values. Business is all about solving a problem, so if there was a best niche then that would mean there are better problems than others. And that would sound barbaric.

So it’s actually about just looking at the variables in each of your selections and then pulling the trigger as time is ticking and waits for no one. The quicker you get started and get going then the quicker you will start to gain some traction and figure things out.

What inspiration do you get to write your affiliate articles?

When I first write my articles I do not have the affiliate product in mind.

This is because if we look at Google and where SEO is headed we can quickly see that providing the best answer is the number one goal. Google’s job is to simply provide the most accurate answer that you can find on planet earth resulting in a great user experience.

So the number one goal of your post, should be to provide that to the reader and then recommend any affiliate product that can help them with that problem.

It’s a complete mindset shift from pushing something to make money, as instead, you are presenting a package to solve a problem.

So the inspiration that I get to write an affiliate article comes from the query that I’m trying to answer.

A few things I look at will be whether the affiliate product will make sense for its placement in the post and whether it is something that needs to be visual.

Like, imagine if you were writing about a food recipe for a cooking site or cooking affiliate products and then there were no images. Well, food is something that we need to visualise in order to form potential taste.

So if there were no images then the reader cannot make an attachment to the message, thus resulting in no sale. So it’s important to understand what you’re writing about, as well as whether it’s suitable to position it in that particular post.

A few actionable steps that you can take to find inspiration for a blog post would include just checking out the top 10 ranking sites for the keyword.

You may also want to see a few YouTube videos on the topic and of course the affiliate product website. If you can provide a few snippets as to what they will get inside on the offer then it will qualify them for the purchase.

It’s always important to really hone in on the problem they have as then you can use the affiliate offer as the solution.

More importantly, you want to be honest and genuine, so instead of sounding like some corporate company. You instead need to write as if you are a friendly neighbour from next door that had the same problem and fixed it with X.

How do you promote your affiliate article once you hit publish?

Once you have published the article then it’s important to get the post out in the market. With niche sites, I think you should identify at least 1 or 2 traffic sources that house a bunch of people in the niche with potential problems or interests.

A great two are usually YouTube and Pinterest…. mainly because they both drive a good amount of traffic to niche sites. So you may want to share it on those and then out to an email list if you have built one up for the site.

Although it’s important to get it out, I wouldn’t worry too much about this part on a niche site.

As the idea is to eventually get hands off with the site and take a passive profit each month. So once you’ve pushed it initially then just stay active on 1 or 2 socials max. And if you can afford it, then get someone to manage your socials for you or hire a VA to push it out every time you post.

Eventually, Google will pick up the post and start ranking it but it’s good to get some initial traffic and sales beforehand too.

And also by giving Google the data, it can help them better understand how well your post really is based on the reader’s behaviour.

Any specific tools that you use in the creation of your niche affiliate website?

For creating a niche website there are a number of free tools that I use such as Google Trends, Similar Web, LSI graph and a paid tool called Keysearch.

All of these tools are used to help me better understand the competition and aid me in an attempt to rank number one for a search query.

I then use the paid tool, Keysearch, mainly to find easy to rank keywords and then check the potential traffic for the keyword by seeing what the position one post is receiving.

Of course, this is only estimated as you can not determine what you will get in the same position as they may be ranking for multiple keywords and may have a better or worse title etc. There are many different variables to look at.

Another tool I use is the Moz backlink checker which is free.

I use this to see how many links on average the top ranking post has built per month and whether they are ‘no follow’ or ‘do follow’ links.  

Lastly, a great tool to find keywords can be answerthepublic.com as this will help to find keywords that people are searching for under the topic you are targeting.

What affiliate networks would you recommend for finding products for your affiliate website?

Well, the first thing that needs to be looked at is what level you are currently at. For a beginner then I would always recommend Amazon, but with commissions at a rate of 6% then Amazon may not be the best option.

It all depends on your approach to your site in the first place.

For example, if you do select Amazon then you want to be targeting high ticket products as people don’t look for reviews on other sites for items that cost $2.

It’s more for something that they need to see someone’s opinion on because they are wanting reassurance that they are making the right choice.

If on the other hand, you are either willing to try new products, then there are some great affiliate networks out there such as CJ affiliates, Clickbank, ShareASale and much more.

If you are new and just want to find new products on new networks then head over to offervault.com and just type in your niche and you’ll see a huge amount of affiliate networks within that niche.

Click here to see my Top 10 Places To Find High Paying Affiliate Programs.

See Also 6 Profitable Niche Markets For Affiliates with recommended affiliate networks to join.

Any specific plugins that you use for your affiliate website?

It goes without saying that there are a few plugins that you must have on an affiliate site. Here are a few that I think are mandatory:

1. Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights – see all actions through Google Analytics on your site dashboard
2. Insert Headers and Footers – Add any code to the header and footer of your sites such as 3rd party integrations and coded actions
3. W3 Total Cache – Allows you to clear caches on your site after adjustments to maintain speed
4. Really Simple SSL – Allows you to install an SSL certificate  to your site to encrypt data and protect the site from hackers
5. Yoast SEO – Helps with composing posts, meta descriptions and titles on your website. A must-have plugin.
6. UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore – Allows you to set an automatic backup of your whole website every 4 hours, so you never lose anything again.

Optional plugins

• Pretty Links – allows you to track each specific link that is clicked on your site
• Ultimate Nofollow – Instructs search engines to not crawl your affiliate links so that link juice is not passed to affiliate sites.

You want to keep your plugins to under 20 at all times in order to maintain a good site speed. This is for people with basic hosting of course.

And if you go just over, then that’s fine but make sure it’s something that you really need. One thing you’ll realise with WordPress plugins is that you almost feel that you need them all. It’s like a supermarket of sweets so just be responsible with choosing which ones are really needed.

What tips can you share with anyone who wants to build a niche affiliate website?

If I could give any advice for building an affiliate site then it would be to focus on long-form content to outrank the competition.

And to get started, as that is the main thing with business and life. You will figure things out as you get further along the line. Then once you have everything going, then just keep building and building until you can outsource and pay for others to keep building for you.

The only way to fail is to simply not follow the steps of:

• Keyword research
• Long form high-quality content (images, videos, and everything)

And of course not sticking to it as that is a fast track to never achieve success. But if you stick to selecting something that you care about then you should be just fine.

So get the ball rolling with some easy to rank keywords at the start with low competition. I would write about 15 articles (1500 words) like this that are directly answering question keywords.

Then as you build some authority and trust with Google, I would start to target some medium competition keywords with long-form content around 2500 words a post. Then once you get a little more automotive and really want to knock the ball out the park then start going for high traffic 5k search plus keywords with big 3k words plus posts.

You would need to make sure that this had lots of images, videos, tables and anything that can help provide the best resource on Google for that particular keyword.

Like what you read today? Then follow Leon on his YouTube Channel Leon Angus Affiliate Marketing SEO.

Recommended Resources

If you’re still looking for resources to boost your affiliate marketing skills, here are a few things that I love and recommend:

• The ultimate guide to affiliate marketing crash course (free)
• How to make money as an affiliate with small blogs ebook ($7)
• How to create a money making blog course (free)